Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Some of my friends my age, and yes I am getting older, are moving to management jobs where they don’t code at all. They might be development leads that train and deploy new technologies in bigger companies, or design systems and have others code.

Some of the same friends that interviewed at our smaller company and we didn’t hire because they just didn’t seem right (Where I work now you can’t just design or train since the company is so small). These friends fit right in with the bigger companies; in fact they got jobs as developers however aren’t really doing any development at all. I have a hard time calling these jobs management since they don’t have a lot of people under them; I really just want to call them a “Non-Productive” job – which is reflection of my perspective on how I like coding. I wonder if the bigger companies will “wake up” and make them do something, or force them to do development which they were hired for, or just fire them.

I am not jealous, in fact I tell them about the stuff I am coding in my spare time and they don’t really care at all. Which lead me to realize they really aren’t happier coding?

P.S.

Along with this profound thought, I was out for my afternoon walk in a park near where I work and there was a women spinning wool to yarn in the sun. The first thought is what a waste of time. If I had that time, I would be coding something. Why doesn’t she code, what is the point of spinning yarn – someone in China and do it faster, better with a machine. Doesn’t she realize that we are living in a quickly changing Internet world and she could make her mark on our era with just a single web site. Then again the screen glare on the laptop prevents me from coding in the park on a sunny day. I might be sick.